Organisational career is not dead

Some authors claim that the old (organizational) concept of career is no longer relevant in the Knowledge Economy. Therefore, it must be replaced by a new (individual) concept of career, along with the new forms of career that this concept would entail (the new career (Arnold, Jackson, 1997), the post-corporate career (Peiperl, Baruch, 1997), the intelligent career (Arthur et al.,1995), the protean career (Hall, 1976), and the boundaryless career (Arthur, Rousseau, 1996)).

 The paper argues that the existence of an individual career cannot be denied, but should not be made absolute to all professions, economical sectors, labour markets etc. The unconditional transformation of the organisational concept to the individual is debatable.

The penetration and adequacy of the new concept of career (individual career) in the modern context is criticised with following aspects: the irrevocable replacement of the organisational concept of career with the individual one; the limitations of the situational context on the individual‘s autonomy to independently develop their career; the universality of the concept of individual career and its application to all professions and economic sectors; the tentative originality of the concept of individual career; the waning of organisational influence in developing personal careers; the marginalization of objective indicators of career success; the advantages of life-time employment to both individuals and employers; the dynamic nature of labour markets.

Individual career is considered as one of the career forms in Knowledge Economy in this paper - "either-or" approach between organisational and individual career concepts should be rejected while the "and-and" principle should rather be used.